Morrissey was thrown out of the building. Ewan MacColl met mates at the entrance. The Stone Roses left their mark on the outside in graffiti. Like most Manchester institutions, the Central Library already has a colourful musical history. Now, newly reopened after four years of renovations, it is to become more musical still, with the Chaos To Order festival next week.

“This is the first time that a European library has ever handed control to a band,” says Debra King, director of Brighter Sound, who are producing the event. The band in question is Manchester’s Everything Everything, Ivor Novello and Mercury Prize nominees. They are an odd pop group, somehow managing to be nice, polymathy and popular. The festival programme they have curated is suitably odd too. It is an audacious assembly of musicians, dancers, comedians, broadcasters, writers, van drivers, and young people who don’t know what they want to do with their lives. All five floors of the building are being covered, with performances in the Reading Room, in the entrance hall, in the cafe and in crevices. Also there’s something happening in the two beautiful glass elevators. That will be me actually, spending an unnatural amount of time going up and down in a lift and trying to stave off motion sickness.

My friend Jack and I started a company called Dumblove Encounters. Yes, it’s an unpleasant mouthful, but it got written down one day and now we’re stuck with it. We are still not sure whether we make theatre, art or something else. Usually we say we are making a “thing”. Our work is designed to be one-on-one, an experience shared by a performer and a spectator alone. The pieces are responsive, reactive, shaped by the space and whichever spectator happens to turn up. We design a new production for every venue that is kind enough to invite us. And, like the best thing in life, our pieces are totally free and usually under five minutes.

Famed for their good taste, Everything Everything invited us to make a new idea come to life for Chaos To Order. So there we will be, for five days, standing in the elevators, making a “thing” called “Folk/tale”, which mainly consists of us writing an original story sentence by sentence with our attendees. The new story will be written on the library - on the building, the furniture and on the people. The text will be published nowhere else. It will be born in the library, and belong there.

“Folk/tale” can’t happen if none of you bother to show up so there’s your emotional blackmail for you. And since you’re now coming anyway, here are some tips of what else to see, bearing in mind everything on the programme looks good and mad and free:

• As they are hosting the party, it would be rude to ignore Everything Everything. They will be in residency throughout, writing material in full view of spectators. The new stuff will be debuted properly at 19:00 on Saturday 15 November.
• Josie Long seems nice. She’s always worth watching. Her one-off comedy show “Chaos To Order” is on at 18:00 on Tuesday 11th.
• I have heard good, good things about theatre company Quarantine but not managed to see any of their work yet. They are in the building all week, putting on two pieces called “Between us, we know everything...” and “The Reading Room”.
• BBC Radio 6 Music has a presence during the festival. Breakfast show host and heart-throb Shaun Keaveny performs stand-up at 18:30 next Friday, while Radcliffe And Maconie broadcast their food and music programme live from the library earlier in the afternoon.

See the full Chaos To Order programme here - http://www.librarylive.co.uk/event/everything-everything-presents-chaos-order/

You can book a ticket for ‘Folk/tale’ here - http://www.librarylive.co.uk/event/chaos-to-order-dumblove-encounters-presents-folktale/